PICKENS, S.C. (WSPA) — The City of Pickens held a public forum Monday to discuss a water quality improvement plan for the area.
“The City of Pickens’ residents and our utility customers deserve the best and most efficiently provided water that they an get,” said City Administrator Tim O’Briant.
The city of Pickens withdrew from the Pickens Regional Joint Water System in July.
City officials plan to get water from Greenville Water by the end of the year, but the decision is not supported by everyone in the city.
“Some of my concerns would be that if we go with Greenville Water, we will have no voting member, which means that they can put our price of water at whatever they want to put our price of water at,” said Jessica Merrill. “If we stay with Pickens Regional Joint Water System, we would have two voting members on the board.”
Merrill said she gathered more than 300 signatures, encouraging the city to hold Monday’s public meeting.
“What we hope we do is get out some correct information about Pickens Regional Joint Water System and to bring awareness to other customers who may not be aware of what’s going on so far,” Merrill said.
According to O’Briant, the city is ending its contract with Clear Water Solutions. Ending said contract will save the city between $400,000 to $500,000.
O’Briant added that the city will use that money to improve the water infrastructure.
“It’s a three pronged approach where we’re getting better sourced water than we can from our City Lake reservoir as quickly as possible by the end of this calendar,” O’Briant said. “We’re accelerating in putting whatever funds we can into replacing and maintaining transmission lines and water mains that are pretty aged out at this point. We’re introducing a routine flushing program where we go in and try to remove some of those sediments that have caused problems for some residents.”
City officials said that $3 million will be spent in next three years to replace all customers’ water meters to ensure accuracy
